Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 9-March-03
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Modern Times (1936)

You have to admire a guy who can script a decent movie, write its musical score, oversee its production, assume its starring role, and direct its cast and crew (including his wife), especially when he displays some impressive roller skating skills in the process. (And sings. And dances.) It's no surprise, therefore, that people do admire Charlie Chaplin so much, who does all of these things and more in "Modern Times," the last of his "Little Tramp" movies. At the risk of sounding disrespectful, however, I must say that while this is a remarkable display of talent, it doesn't make "Modern Times" a great film. This is a movie that seems to promise one thing and delivers another, losing its focus along the way and providing only intermittent moments of distinction.

The movie opens by announcing its theme as "humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness," but it quickly sets itself up as a lampoon of the depersonalization of the industrial age. After seeing comparison shots of a flock of sheep and a bunch of businessmen at rush hour, we meet our hero, a simple factory worker who turns bolts at a steel mill. He is nothing but a cog in a machine, his every move regulated by a complex system of levers and switches and conveyor belts whose operation is controlled by a barking middle management drudge in a suit. Even his bodily functions are being taken over by commercial efficiency: he is monitored in the men's room through a giant viewing screen and is forced to test drive an automatic feeding machine that his boss thinks might be a great way to reduce down time and increase productivity.

Initially, then, "Modern Times" seems to be a comical but critical social commentary along the lines of "1984" (only scarier, because it's set in the viewers' present day). But then the factory worker suffers a nervous breakdown and is sent to jail, during which time the steel mill closes, leaving him to become a tramp like so many others in the Great Depression (only with more expressive eyebrows and a funny way of running around corners). This is when the film loses its edge. Leaving behind the particular evils of modern times, it turns instead to the evils that have plagued all times: hunger, destitution, and despair (along with their counterbalances, love and hope). The Little Tramp forms a somewhat ambiguous bond with a pretty, homeless orphan (Paulette Goddard), and together they try to claw their way towards the American dream. He enjoys a brief stint as a night watchman at a department store (an underused setting, though the roller skating scene is great) and continues to have run-ins with the law, while she keeps his spirits up and eventually lands a job as a dancer in a cabaret. The point of their efforts seems to be the more general and simplistic "it sucks to be poor" rather than the more biting and observant "oh, what a strange and terrifying world we live in."

"Modern Times" is listed in my guidebook as the last of Chaplin's silent films, but it isn't really silent. There's a somewhat jarring mixture of actors mutely speaking lines that are spelled out in captions, and people talking, listening to the radio, etc., with real-time sound. The movie would have benefited from either giving everyone a voice (thereby diminishing the influence of their faces and bodies), or sticking to a truly silent format dependent almost exclusively on body language. I personally would have preferred the latter, since it might have prevented the inclusion of Chaplin's long song-and-dance number near the end, which isn't funny (despite a deliberately comic build-up) and doesn't make much sense.

But perhaps it's tempting to find fault with movies by people who are widely thought to be brilliant, as if they themselves have arrogantly demanded that you bow before them and acknowledge their genius. "Modern Times" is not on the level of, say, "City Lights," but it's fairly entertaining and in no way diminishes the favorable reputation of the man who conceived it, nurtured it, and delivered it to the light of day.

Copyright © 2003 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.